Something happened Saturday night that happens to every single person on the planet at some time or another. I was sitting on the bench at my hockey game just before the game was about to start. The scorekeeper was walking around the outside of the rink to his booth. As he walked by, he smiled a bit and said something, then laughed. I have absolutely no idea what he said, yet after he said it, I presented a phony laugh as he laughed. I was falsely conveying the belief that I understood what he said, and found it to be humorous. Why did I do that?

A fellow teammate was sitting beside me, and he gave the guy a small laugh as well. I asked him why he laughed, and he said he did not know, because he did not hear what the scorekeeper said either. Why did he do that?

We briefly discussed this phenomenon, but it spurred my imagination greatly. What were we doing? We were basically lying to this man. Is this fair? What if the scorekeeper had something important to say, such as providing us with key information that we may need to survive a holocaust? what if he had travelled from the future and was giving us the outcome of the game, or better yet, that evening's lottery numbers? We deprived this man of truly sharing his well crafted thought, and why? ...to be friendly? Is it friendly to make someone believe that you heard them if you didn't? Perhaps we simply did not want to waste our time with the process of declaring a mis-hear, and having him repeat the verbiage. What if he had repeated what he said, and it turns out that he said his mom was raped and killed by neo-nazis that morning. Then we would have to deal with all that. What if what he said was supposed to be some sort of joke, but it really was not funny whatsoever. Then we would be stuck in a similar scenario where we may feel obligated to laugh anyway, so the dude doesn't fell bad, and jump off a bridge or some shit.

I am really not sure how that article would turn out, I kind of thought I would figure it all out in the process of describing it. Turns out I didn't. It it quite interesting though. What do you do in those scenarios? What should you do? how many licks does it take to get the center of a tootsie roll pop?


...on a side note. I am eating strange food and exercising as planned. I am only on day 2. On day 1 I lost 1.2 pounds. I also discovered that an elliptical device is dramastically different than a treadmill. The last time I got into treadmilling, which was maybe 2 years ago, I could walk for an hour and hardly break a sweat. On the elliptical, I went 15 minutes, and was practically dead. I checked the on-board electronics of the trusty HR1100/A and realized the difference. On the elliptical, I average nearly 10 miles an hour, which on the treadmill, would be practically running full speed. On the elliptical, this is right around 2.5 miles in 15 minutes, which is pretty damn fast, and a LOT of exercise. I challenge anyone who is not used to that kind of crap to try it out. More updates on my progress later.